Github link: https://github.com/Dakkaron/Fairberry
Here’s a video of it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDb8_ld9gOQ
I’ve been using it for almost two years now, and I’m not going back.
It’s based on a spare Blackberry Q10 keyboard and a custom Arduino-compatible board that reads the keyboard matrix and outputs it as USB HID to the phone. From the viewpoint of the phone, it’s just a regular USB keyboard, so no special software is needed.
But I do use a custom virtual keyboard to have just two rows of symbols that are not natively on the keyboard, as I didn’t want to add another layer of rarely used symbols that I’d have to memorize.
(On the image you can see Ubuntu with XFCE4 running on it. I chose Ubuntu because it’s what was easiest to get running in a chroot jail on the phone. I’m using VNC to display the GUI. I even managed to get FEX (x86/x64 emulator) and Wine running, so it runs x86/x64 Linux and Windows apps.)
BEHOLD. The true candy bar phone dimensions.
That’s incredible, happy to see the old hardware still kicking!
On a similar note, sometime a year ago I spotted a guy using a Q10 at a shopping center in LA. Had a quick chat which was fun.
Wow that’s really cool. The hybrid physical/virtual is a great touch, and the ability to customize what’s in those top two rows would be amazing. So cool what you can do with modular open design!
